Parents and Caretakers: What methods do you use to get your toddler to sit and eat?

High chair, or a booster seat with a strap that she can’t undo but will keep her in the seat.

No, no, no. Never bribe, and NEVER use dessert as the treat. You will be instilling bad eating habits that will not keep her in good stead later on.

I have never met a normal little kid who has starved. Feed her; when she runs off, wait until next meal for more food. Who is training whom here? (First baby?)

@rangerr‘s suggestion is spot on. Also, maybe leaving her alone for a minute or two. When I babysit my friend’s two-year-old, she plays with her food and does not eat it. Finally, I tried leaving her alone and washing dishes. I could still see her, but I wasn’t right there. Turns out she just wanted an audience. when I finished with the dishes and came back to her, she was eating happily.

You are wanting more patience than she has right now.

I allowed my son to eat at the table for less than 5mins per meal at that age. that was all he could sit at the table for. I allowed him to stand for his snacks (which he still does at age 4).

Mind you, since 9mos of age he could sit for 45mins to an hour for reading time. Now he can sit for over an hour.

He’s still not big on sitting for a long time to eat. We allow him to draw or write whilst eating at home & out.

If you’re trying to make her eat what you want her to eat when you want her to eat it, you’re going to be frustrated. If she doesn’t want to eat, let her skip a meal. She’ll be hungry for the next one. But the thing you have to be careful with here is snacks. Determine a small snack that she can have between meals (include milk, that helps) and then she’ll eat the next meal because she’ll be hungry for it. When she’s hungry, she’ll sit and eat.

If my son isn’t interested, I put him down and he plays with his toys at his train table and I continue to eat. He is almost 2½ and we are not going to all suffer because he refuses to eat at certain times.
I usually have at least one thing I know he’ll love, like corn or pasta..but there is also other things for him to try. I don’t view it as bribing, but I let him know something he enjoys for dinner is at the table.
Also, if he doesn’t feel like eating, I make a plate for him and allow him to eat it later. He wakes up late from his nap, and goes to bed later than “normal” toddlers, so I think it’s fine that I allow him to eat dinner around 8pm instead of 7pm with the family. He does know and acknowledge family dinner time though, and he does enjoy it (especially when my brother joins us)

@gailcalled Ugh. I’m so bad lately about bribing :( Only in public, when I’m just desperate. We’ve started taking toys away and making him cool off for a couple minutes and once he behaves he can have his toy back…is that acceptable??

@casheroo We call that (taking toy away) “Toy Time-Out”. Yes, it works. Some toys are in “Time-Out” more than the others….the really bad ones become outdoor only or somehow get misplaced forever.

@SpatzieLover Or they “break.” Because the batteries magically got replaced and re-replaced with dead ones.

offer dessert, or threaten to take away something like television or video games.

Two year old grandson:
Several things might work. At his house, his parents just put his plate where he can reach it, and let him take what he wants, when he wants, and they feed him out of their plates when he asks.

Here, I put him in his play chair with his table in front of him, and the TV on while I prepare our meals, and I give him small amounts, like a few bites of vegetables first, followed by a few bites of meat or cheese, and then some bread sticks, and finally some slices of fruit. By then, I am usually finished with our own dinner, and if he wants to, he is allowed to ask for bites off our plates.

We don’t have formal sit down meals and my son grew up this way, so he is used to it.

Do the highchair thing or booster seat. Something that straps her in. If she won’t eat. Fine but she stays for meal time. And no food later. Meal time is meal time. Once she realizes that not eating then means hungry, she will eat. And she will eat loooong before starving. Also, if she becomes unbearable later, get her dinner plate out of the fridge and set her up.

I never forced my kids to eat. I was always told by seasoned mothers that a kid will eat when they are hungry, so don’t force them. If they want to eat two bites and that’s enough, so be it. My son went for a year not eating enough to keep a bird alive, or so it seemed. I continued to ask the doctor about it at every visit. Jack was maintaining his weight, so the doctor said it was fine. Then he went through a phase where all he wanted to eat was Blueberry Pop Tarts. The doctor said, let him have them, so I did. He got over it and eats normally now.

Good luck. We have created an ask to be excused rule. If he gets up without being asked he has to get back in his seat and ask to be excused. This gives us a chance to slow him down and have a brief discussion about whether he has really eaten as much as he is going to want. Usually he says yes, he’s really done, but sometimes getting that little break reminds him he actually is still hungry. Once we’ve encouraged him to stay and eat a few more bites if he still asks to be excused, we let him. Not much you can do about it. We do tell him if he really hasn’t eaten much that he can’t have any desert, sometimes he eats more, sometimes he says that’s OK. I don’t think it’s bribery, it’s just a rule. You have to eat a reasonable amount of healthy food to earn desert.

@rguest The kid’s 2½.

Don’t make food a battle… This is your meal. Don’t want to eat? Ok. The next healthy meal or snack will be in a few hours. The end.

Set a firm rule that when you get up from the table, you’re done eating.
Your child will not starve.

I just realized everything I was about to say was already said by @gailcalled.

Well, the hungrier the child is, the more time they’ll spend eating at one sitting, so maybe she’s just not that hungry at lunch or dinner. Are you feeding her snacks in between meals? Overall, I guess I don’t know why you’d want her to stay in one place until she’s finished.

Oh, and I agree, don’t ever use food as either a punishment or a reward. Food is simply a way of staying alive and shouldn’t be viewed as anything else, or it creates eating issues…..may cause them to start eating for emotional reasons instead of the reason we have to have food.

I can totally sympathize with you! Toddlers are strong-willed beings, they’ve got their whole identity as individuals on the line!

My only advice is to try and get one step ahead if you don’t like how the current methods are working, outsmart ‘em by offering choices that are acceptable to you so they can feel some independence by making a choice, and you can be happy with whatever the outcome is. Sometimes we remember to do this ;)

Like @gussnarp, we have a rule with our 2½ year old about getting up from the table – when he’s done eating, he needs to wash his hands. So, if he gets up, he has a choice between washing his hands and being “done done” or sitting back down and continuing to eat. It helps cut down a bit the number of times he pops up, but offering a choice really really helps with the battle of wills that happens if we tell him to sit back down.

At restaurants we usually put him in a highchair if we don’t want to struggle, but at home and sometimes out, we want to be teaching him how to eat at a table in a regular chair.

When our son was one and a half, we had a down and out battle with him meal after meal about eating. Mostly about eating healthy foods that we knew he’d eaten and liked in the past. Meals tended to end in tears, always his, sometimes (more figuratively & frustratedly) mine. My husband and I learned / decided at that point that having battles of wills was causing all of us to lose, and not resulting in more healthy food being eaten, and once we lightened up, made the healthy food available but also things we knew he’s happy to eat (bread and milk alone are a pretty balanced meal for a toddler), he now maybe half the time is happy to explore other foods.

If he wants more bread, that’s an opportunity to say “I’ll give you another piece after you’ve eaten (or sometimes just “tried”) your broccoli and chicken.” Sometimes then he’s too full for the bread, sometimes he gets it.

And also, for the people who have suggested threatening the kid with losing a privileged or something if they don’t eat:

When it comes to eating, it’s the caregiver’s job to decide when and what. The kid gets to decide if and how much. Why would you take away something enjoyable from a child because his or her body is signaling different hunger cues than you think it should have?

@Likeradar I agree. We have a house rule: You must eat something healthy before you cane eat junk. That means no chocolate, no cookie, no cake-etc without having either a balanced meal or a fruit or veggie serving. We all abide by the rule, so our son sees it in action.

Often, my four year old is actually only hungry for one decent meal per day. So I break down his meals into even smaller meals and feed him more oftern to keep his energy levels up.

@Likeradar I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it is unwise to tell anyone else how to care for their children or their pets. I’m glad you have a philosophy, and I hope it works for you. I happen to know my child, I know when he is just saying he is done because he wants to go play with something but is really still hungry. Sometimes I’m wrong. But I like to slow him down enough to let him think about it. It’s not as if I tie him down and shove food in him or tell him I’ll take all his toys if he doesn’t eat. What I say is, if you do not eat the healthy food I have provided, do not expect to eat a bowl of ice cream in five minutes. Thats not taking something away for not eating as much as I want him to, that’s just deciding when and what.

Frankly, I don’t think there’s a parent (or parenting book) out there that can definitively say what the right thing to do is in many cases. There are some clear very wrong things, but those are obvious. What I have found, in my experience, is that you do what works for you. My generation’s parents told us we would sit at the table until we cleaned our plates. Now you may blame the current obesity pandemic on them, but their parents did the same thing. And plenty of Americans grew up that way without an unhealthy attitude toward food. I’m not saying that approach is the best, but I am saying that anyone who lays down absolutes on the tiny details of child rearing is going to make some people very angry.

@gussnarp I didn’t say you had to do it. Maybe I should have started with “my philosophy is…”
I also wasn’t referring to your post. but to the people who suggested taking away activities or privileges if the kid won’t eat, fwiw.

@Likeradar I didn’t mean to get so testy, go back to the first sentence. Wording is key with these issues, and even then it’s tricky at best. Thanks for your comment.

I almost never had ANY junk food in my house. After I got remarried (my kids were 15 and 17) my hubby started bringing in bags chips and stuff, and they’d sit on the counter for weeks. The kids weren’t even interested.

@Val123 even our “junk” food is organic or homemade ;)

@SpatzieLover Youse goot mom!

My oldest who’s now 3 years and 3 months never missed a meal in his life…it must be the old fashioned
Russian parent in me but his meals were always scheduled and NOT AN OPTION to miss so we never had all that much of a problem because it was never an option…when he’s playing, I give him a 5 minute and 1 minute till food calls…then we start to eat…when he was the age your child is now he gave us trouble yes but if he didn’t want to eat, just like with anything else, he’d have to go stand in front of the wall…he hates being there, it bores the crap out of him so he always come back pretty quickly and of course there are other reinforcements…he likes certain things, if he doesn’t eat, those things will not b egiven to him that day…period

@gussnarp The theory of “how much they need” is sound and based on everything experts know about child development. If they’re hungry, they’ll eat. If they’re not hungry at meal time, healthy limited snacks and food at the next meal time will work just fine. @Likeradar‘s comment was a statement encompassing what we know to be true.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Punishment because kids don’t feel hungry and don’t want to force food down that they don’t need is thought to be a part of the obesity problem. Less than the problem with feeding kids junk, but still a part of the issue.

@avvooooooo I don’t punish him when he isn’t eating, I make him go and calm down…he refuses to eat not because he’s not hungry but because he’s being a brat…and this is very rare…he never has to eat it ALL if he isn’t hungry and coming from a public health world there is going to be NO parent-related obesity issues in my household…my kids eat better than you me and the Pope…if you want I can detail you the menu..it’d put any of us to shame, I kid you not

Simone is super organized!

@Val123 if I don’t stay organized (which is against my will, believe me) I’ll go insane quicker each day…working, doing yoga, dancing tango, raising two babies under 4, helping mom get through refinancing the house, starting a new business with people that I don’t want to start it with, worrying about money, thinking about who of the two of us will go to school for another degree first, etc. etc. makes one HAVE to stay organized…

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Wow! Your plate is FULL!! It’s a good thing you have found a way to slowly go insane each day! what kind of business?

@Val123 wedding photography (same shit different day) – my father died last month leaving me his wedding photography business in debt…we need to declare bankruptcy…his partner wants to, after the bankruptcy, start another business using all of my dad’s old ideas and the clientele…and I find this problematic…so I’m entering as an owner so that we can profit from this new business but I am only doing this because I find this whole situation to be unfair

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I knew about your Dad, and what a mess! Man, I’m glad I don’t have to deal with it. Is it going to cost you a lot of $$ for startup? And what happens if it doesn’t work, goes under?

@Val123 I am not giving them any money to start up…they owe me 70k and this is one of the way I will make sure that they pay me that money back using their new business income if it works out…if it doesn’t there will be a clause written into the business plan that once it goes down any money made from selling equipment, etc. will go to first pay off that first initial debt

70K? OMG! Was that money you lent to your dad originally?
Well, you go girl! Stay in touch!

@Val123 – it is my money and it is my mom’ smoney…I never knew I was lending it to him, so to speak…he got me to open up these credit cards when I was 17 and then took them…I never asked twice

When my daughter was that age (or a little younger actually) I had this great trick: I didn’t get her to sit and eat at all. I completely ignored her. I made her meal and then sat at the table and pretended to eat it myself, and made comments about how wonderful it was. But not directly to her (kids can be smart sometimes). I would just “eat”, pretending this was my food. Then at some point I’d lower the spoon at a level where she could reach it, somewhere near my thigh, and absent-mindedly look somewhere else, and she’d come and taste it, and I’d act all surprised and go “wow! where did that food go?”. And it slowly became a game where she’d come and steal “my food” from “my spoon”.

Aeroplanes and trains also worked, especially if the spoon flies through the chairs, under the table etc before it lands in her mouth. But it doesn’t work for my nephew, so I guess it depends on the child.

PS: oh btw children do not understand the phrase “if you don’t eat you won’t get dessert”. Next time try “if you eat, you will get dessert” or some other reward. Formulate the sentences positive. I know for grown-ups it’s a question of grammar, but for a child one sentence makes sense and the other one is unreal.